Early lineages of Vespidae (Hymenoptera) in Cretaceous amber

Abstract

Three wasp (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) fossils in Cretaceous amber (Late Albian) of northern Myanmar are described. Two are new species of the Mesozoic genus Curiosivespa (Rasnitsyn): C. zigrasi sp.n. and C. striata sp.n. The third species, Protovespa haxairei gen.n. et sp.n., has a combination of features unique among Mesozoic Priorvespinae and the extant subfamilies. These well preserved fossils provide new morphological data for a cladistic analysis of the basal lineages of Vespidae. Results suggest that Euparagiinae is the sister group of all other Vespidae. The new genus Protovespa appears more closely related to extant Masarinae, Eumeninae and social wasps than to Priorvespinae. We assign it to a new subfamily: Protovespinae. Finally, fossil information combined with a phylogenetic tree shows that the main groups of Vespidae probably evolved during the Early Cretaceous.This published work has been registered in ZooBank, http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid: zoobank.org:pub:1E7E4796-6E70-4D81-BB34-0FEEA765DC25.

Phylogenomic Evidence Overturns Current Conceptions of Social Evolution in Wasps (Vespidae)

“…2014 ; Piekarski et al. 2014 ; Perrard et al. 2017 ), our robust molecular phylogeny inferred from novel genetic data supports two independent origins of eusociality in Vespidae ( fig.…”

“…A single origin of eusociality has received further support as morphological data accumulates ( da Silva et al. 2014 ), and is also the result following from the most recent paleontological analysis of Vespidae ( Perrard et al. 2017 ) and a phylogenetic analysis of tribal relationships within Eumeninae ( Hermes et al.…”

Direct evidence for eudicot pollen-feeding in a Cretaceous stinging wasp (Angiospermae; Hymenoptera, Aculeata) preserved in Burmese amber

“…Lastly, the aculeate sting allows wasps to forage exposed on flowers with relative impunity, testament to which are the hundreds of flower-visiting syrphid and conopid flies, beetles, and diurnal moth species that mimic the bold black-and-yellow aposematic color patterns of vespids and bees. Basal lineages of Vespidae existed by the time Burmese amber was formed in the mid-Cretaceous 62,63 and a species of zhangsolvid fly even exists in Burmese amber with vespid-like aposematic patterns 64 . For Prosphex , its body coloration was either uniform or the patterns were not preserved, which is typical of inclusions in amber, the zhangsolvid being a rare exception.…”

To the knowledge of eumenine wasps (Hymenoptera: Vespidae: Eumeninae) of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan

“…The subfamily Eumeninae is the most diverse group of vespid wasps. More than 3750 species of eumenine wasps are known in the World and about 1000 species occur in the Palaearctic region (Perrard et al, 2017;Antropov & Fateryga, 2017). There is no published list of eumenine wasps of Azerbaijan but there is a paper with the list of these wasps in Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic containing 50 species (Aliyeva, 2010).…”